Which one should I pick and why? I would rather not try both and pick which I want (too much time). I would like to learn from your experience.

I am a Fine Art Nature Photographer.My main processing computer is a Desktop Macintosh: 3 GHz Dual-Core MacPro with 8 GB RAM.A typical shoot for me is 50 to 100 photographs. I shoot about 100 days a year.

From my standpoint the 'current' answer is it depends... It depends on what you want to acheive and how many software packages you want to achieve it with.

I havent seen a straight out RAW conversion comparison between aperture and LR - but it would be interesting to see. Lot of other factors would contribute to the decision however.

LR workflow for me is wonderful for workflow - but.. I prefer the conversions from Digital Photo Professional... and I am finding that I am willing to put in the extra yards that DPP means to my workflow in order to get the conversions I want.

I'll probably buy LR when it is released and use it alongside DPP and CS2...

I dont think I have helped your decision much.. but there are a lot of factors to consider for the individual photographer.

Somewhere on this site, Michael said something about a change in the Aperture database, in the new version, that I didn't understand. He said it made the program much better. Has Apple changed the type of database used by Aperture?

To get the best out of a RAW converter you really need a custom camera profile.

Its amazing the difference it makes. Also some converters handle noise differently than others producing mixed results even from the same identical RAW file. Its kinda frustrating. Ive used DPP and Adobe RAW (CS2) on the same file and the sharpening on the DPP is awful and noise is blotchy"? and the shadows dirty and on the CS2 much better but the color on the DPP seems to be a tad better sometimes.

forget about aperture...I bought it before it came out....trusting tooo much in the apple name and what they did with Pro cut.....Aperture sucks, still does after all their updates!It doesn't even read my Leaf MF files!!?? How professional is that?? I luckily got a 200 dollar check but the program is in my eyes not worth more than 50 bucks!!

I hate it that they brought such an inferior program on the market...and ripped me off.

So my 2 cents: go with lightroom..I have been working with it and it works great!! It supposed to come out soon and only for about 100 bucks!!

I have and use both. I shoot with both a Canon 1DMKII and a 5D. As of right now I find Aperture the better product but Lightroom is still in beta so it is a little like compareing apples to oranges. The current version of Apperture allows you to store your images in your own folders or import them into its own folder structure. It also keeps track of offline images such as those on a cd or dvd. It also handles multiple versions of images something that lightroom doesn't do yet. I find it does raw conversoins as good as C1 pro. Lightroom is free right now so worth looking at no matter what. Because I purchased a copy of Rawshooter I am entitled to a free version of Lightroom so I will probably use it on my Windows notebook.

...and I'm amazed. It works extremely well on my MacBook (non pro), and seemed just as fast as Lightroom. Even the loupe is fast and smooth.

Then I started up Lightroom, just to check. Actually, I never got around to trying it since Beta 4 was released ... and ... er ... jaw drop moment. Wow. It has changed beyond recognition. The new white balance tool is an absolute killer feature.

I'm going to have to seriously consider if Lightroom is as good at raw conversion as Iridient Raw Developer, 'cos on every other point, it really has got its act together. Who needs to go to Damascus, anyway.

As an example of the frustrating process of learning software by the trial-and-error method, it turns out that you CAN save multiple versions of an image to your shoots, and without having the storage overhead of multiple copies of the raw file.

I was lamenting the same inability til I learned in the Adobe Labs forum how to use the History tab in Develop module to save and name different versions of the same image.

As an example of the frustrating process of learning software by the trial-and-error method, it turns out that you CAN save multiple versions of an image to your shoots, and without having the storage overhead of multiple copies of the raw file.

I was lamenting the same inability til I learned in the Adobe Labs forum how to use the History tab in Develop module to save and name different versions of the same image.

Granted you can create multiple history states, but that isn't a easy as in Aperture, and the implementation isn't as smooth. Also in Aperture there isn't a big penalty storage vise as the versions are just sets of data and scripts/adjustments. A version isn't a complete copy of the full file. They only add a few kb each.

Also a killer problem for me was that Lightroom doesn't like REALLY large files since like Beta 2/3, I shoot a few images and stitch them together and have files that are regularly 200-400mb, Lightroom won't import them. Aperture will.

There was something on the lightroom support site saying that as it was aimed at DSLR users and the like they don't provide support for huge files, as no current digital camera makes files that big.

Maybee this has changed recently, but certainly wehn Beta 4 came out it wouldn't support large files. Perhaps Beta 4.1 changed that?